


Indecent Proposals

by MerryArwen (lalaietha)



Series: Clever Woman, Doctor's Wife [12]
Category: Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-27
Updated: 2010-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-06 17:48:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/MerryArwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Mary comes to a conclusion and broaches a subject.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Indecent Proposals

Sherlock Holmes was very nearly the only reason telegrams ever came to the house.

Mary was torn as to whether or not the quiet campaign of guilt on his part was the product of design and will, or simply the unintended consequence of a terrible intelligence in a dreadfully isolated man. In her more cynical moments, she wondered if there had been other John Watsons before her John Watson, but even there she was forced to admit that if there had been, his loyalty to her John Watson in this regard was complete. Mr Holmes' career as England's most brilliant consulting detective - now becoming something of a legend - continued; no new partner emerged.

And the telegrams continued, even when there was no chance at all that John would take off and be in Paris the next morning, because the dual duties of husband and physician kept him pinned in one spot.

John did not actually chafe at life. Mary was quite careful of that. Twice a week she did, in fact, have apportioned funds for his bets: those two nights, Lottie and Olivia came and they drank probably too much wine and Lottie and Olivia slept in best guest bedroom, and their conversation was not what the conduct-manuals would approve of.

And when a case was sufficiently important, Mary said nothing to stop John from going - only demanded he promise to take care, and not run across piers after mechanically inclined blackguards without careful attention to his lower limbs.

Beyond that, John had his patients, and some of them brought their own excitement. He was not restless. She did not take his word for this - she knew. To her, John Watson was as transparent as ever he was to Sherlock Holmes. More, perhaps: Sherlock Holmes' insistence at all times upon his own will might well stand in the way of a certain amount of clarity, when looking at those closest to him.

Still the telegrams came.

Sometimes, reading them brought John only to roll his eyes. Sometimes he frowned at them, and excused himself for an hour or two, presumably to hunt up old contacts or leads and send the information through the fragile wires to Derbyshire or Scotland or Paris or Dartmoor or whatever far-flung place the case had taken Sherlock Holmes this time.

Sometimes, he read them and threw them in the fire. On those occasions, his affectionate nature - never truly absent, to be sure - became positively forefront in his character. They had scandalized Sally twice on such occasions. Fortunately, Mrs Trust was impossible to scandalize, or it would have been much worse, but even John came very soon to absolute trust in her discretion.

Sometimes, on those occasions, John's amorousness was tentative and gentle, in a way it took her some time to understand - and then when she did, she learned how to be a queen to rival Bilqis, and found to her absolute shock that she loved it. Even Aunt Emma hadn't quite prepared her for that.

John, at least, did not object when from time to time she became Bilqis of her own volition. Not hardly.

Still. The telegrams came. And if she was quick and careful, out of the corner of her eyes she could see the naked longing on John's face, before whatever other action the words brought took him over and he succumbed to irritation, or concern, or even desire.

 

*****

 

Sometimes she thought she had always been in love with Sherlock Holmes. That, indeed, she had become so before she even met him. That she loved him because John loved him, and through John she could see everything in the frustrating, proud, impossible man that was worthy of love and affection.

Other times, she knew she fell in love with him the moment he said the thing that made her throw wine in his face. The moment, paradoxically, that he was wrong. The moment his deduction led him astray - no, the moment his _heart_ led him astray, and love and jealousy led him to speculate aloud on the worst possible reason for the pale band that Rupert's ring had left.

(Because really, Mr Holmes, would a woman who had so guilty a secret, and yet was composed enough to be wearing her employer's most treasured jewels - really, Mr Holmes, would such a woman invite you to read her? Love makes fools of us all, Mr Holmes. Even you.)

She fell in love with him when she knew the great detective, London's most feared mind, was as human as she was, and had the taste to love the same man. Nothing led her to fall out of love. His qualities and his imperfections wove a frustrating, deeply affecting web. He was inscrutable to men, she thought, and perhaps even to most women, because most women would fear or hate him.

For her, to read the book of Sherlock Holmes was of course not easy. What about the man could be easy? But as she could puzzle out the most ancient text, she could read snatches of Sherlock Holmes, a tongue which John understood better yet.

John was a psalm; John was a prayer. She had not thought she could love a man so much, and for so many qualities. His kindness, and his scathing temper; his furious devotion to justice and the right, and his capacity for forgiveness, given before the party who wronged him ever asked.

His wisdom, his perception, his _understanding_. And under that, his wicked sense of play, with its unerring aim. Better, to tell the truth, than his friend's.

His first love's. An ocean of time between that first love, and herself.

She knew that on some level, her equanimity with being the second love came from also being the victor. That she had very little guilt at being the victor - victrix, properly, and the difference did matter - came from knowing that her victory came in no small part from concession: that, had she not been willing to cede part of John's heart forever with Sherlock Holmes, her victory would be Pyrrhic indeed.

And in the aftermath, he had his own victory, though she suffered no defeat: part of her heart, as well as part of John's.

John was a psalm; Sherlock Holmes was a rhyme, a rede, a riddle.

The telegrams came, and over time, she watched for the longing on her husband's face, and she considered.

 

*****

 

This time, the telegram came from Belgium. Mary did not ask why Sherlock Holmes was in Belgium. She did not, at the heart of it, care: in the end, he was in Belgium because the man wouldn't know what rest was if it bit him on the arse and hit him over the head with a broken bottle.

So Mary did not ask. Instead, she caught her seated husband's collar in her fist, tight, and pulled him up to kiss her. She bade him come to their bedroom; she told him to unlace her corsets, and undress himself, and when they were both indecently naked she kissed him again and pushed him back towards the bed. When he fell, she knelt; when she took him in her mouth, he prayed, praised, blasphemed and eventually begged. And her heart beat itself nearly out of her breast to hear him do so.

He begged and she denied; he gasped and she took Lilith's part and her mind went in its circles of laughter and love and desire and loss as she moved atop him. And John worshipped her and called her love and eventually they came, together or near enough, because by now they were practiced.

There wasn't actually a fire in this room - they'd given Sally no chance to lay one - so Mary very quickly urged John under the blankets and curled up close to him, always warmer than she was, while he played with her newly-loosened hair.

"I know you love him," she said, at last. "I know you miss him."

John didn't answer, which was as good as an admission. So Mary matched him with one of her own.

"I believe," she said, slowly, "that I may love him as well."

This time, John's silence was pregnant, and she did not entirely know how he might break it. At last he said, and there was a smile in his voice, "I came home from Afghanistan a wreck. What, my darling, is your excuse?"

Mary wriggled around until she could look him in the face, and then said, "I thought I might blame you." She brushed the tip of his nose with her forefinger.

"Probably justly," he acknowledged. But his look was more serious than his voice. "You were going somewhere with this thought, I expect."

"Mmm," Mary acknowledged. She thought how to phrase it, and eventually asked, "How does he like me now, do you think?"

The look that passed over John's face was complex. He said, "You cannot possibly be suggesting what I think you are?"

"Can't I?" she challenged, and smiled at him, knowing it didn't reach her eyes. "You must have recognized by now, Dr Watson, that you have not married an entirely respectable woman."

"I have married," he said, very definitely, "one of the best women, if not the best woman, in the world." He put a curled finger under her chin and looked thoughtful. "Are you actually suggesting I - well, we, I suppose . . . " he trailed off, as if searching for the word, and at last saying, "address the issue with him?"

"Actually," Mary corrected, "I was suggesting that I might leave my diary open to the page I intend to write, where he might find it."

John stared at her. Then he began to laugh. Helplessly.

"You know he will not be able to resist looking," she said, and he only laughed more. She let him, and sat up. There was a cord on the table by the bedside; while John controlled his hilarity, Mary carefully braided her hair and secured it, for sleep.

To Hell, she decided quite deliberately, with finding nightgowns and nightcaps. They could sleep as they were.

By the time she was finished, John sat up as well, and was looking at her with quite a bit more of a serious expression. "You are serious," he said, in a manner that was not, in fact, a question.

"Quite," she said.

He did not answer in words; he only leaned forward and kissed her gently, closed-mouth. Mary understood him quite well, and settled down under the coverlet.

"He will," she added, sleepily, "have to understand that I will have his room cleaned, and he is not to leave anything there that might excessively distress poor Sally."

"I shall tell him that," John said, in the same sleepy, deeply amused tone.

Mary knew he would not sleep for some time, as he thought about this. She was content that it was so. He had a greatly longer history to consider.


End file.
